The olympic torch relay was held in Australia in Canberra on 24th April 2008. It was a rare ocassion and we decided that it was worth it to brave the cold (it was 2 degree celcius the morning) in the early morning and held for the opening ceremony.
The event also coincided with the one week hot air balloons festival and organisers decided to hold the opening ceremony and the launch of hot air balloons at the same venue....outside the old parliament house.
It was 5.30am when we woke up the kids and it wasn't until 5.55am before we managed to drive out of our house. The morning fireworks was supposed to go off at 6.00am and naturally, we missed the morning fireworks since we depart late.
The entire venue was starting to be filled by 6.15am. Throngs of people...especially Chinese wearing shirts in red and waving red flags were filling up the ground. Such spectacular display of nationalism with thousands of Chinese waving flags was a sight to behold. One can't help but feel that it was a orchestrated event as there were simply too many people wearing red and waving the red flags (PS - it was subsequently reported in the newspaper that the Chinese embassy had a major role in mobilising the crowd at the venue). Many of these people who came were not staying in Canberra. You could see bus loads of visitors (mainly Chinese) arriving at the venue with their luggages in tow.
When the pro-Tibet demonstrators arrived at the scene, they were over-whelmed by the floor of Chinese supporters and had to retreat. There were some skirmishes between the 2 groups but the pro-tibet demonstrators were far and few and gave up their cause very quickly.
The other highlight of the event was the launching of hot air balloons. This is one of the major attraction and event in Canberra during the hot air balloon week. Many hot air balloon vendors, corporations were busy launching their balloons. There were corporate sponsored hot air balloons, commercial hot air balloon vendors and balloons with shapes (kookaburra hot air balloon and star shape balloon).
In spite of the early morning and cold, we felt that it was all worth it. When we came home, we were all tired and hungary. We wolfed down one whole loaf of bread with ham and egg along with hot aromatic long white coffee.
What an experience!
